UNHCR could not have imagined what a prized asset she would be to them when she first contacted them 10 years ago.
Uploaded by unhcr on Apr 5, 2012
The siege of Sarajevo began 20 years ago. Lasting nearly four years, it became one of the most dramatic and emblematic events of the violent breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
Getty Images
From our archive: 20 years since the Yugoslav Wars - a look back in pictures http://bit.ly/Hr0AdB
Opinion: Bosnia's lesson for Syrian slaughter
April 5, 2012 -- Updated 1726 GMT (0126 HKT)
CNN (CNN) -- Twenty years ago, April 5, 1992, Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sucic were shot and killed in Sarajevo. They were the shots heard around the world and they started the Bosnian War.
I covered that war, and
many colleagues are gathering in Sarajevo now to commemorate what took
hundreds of thousands of lives, left so many more wounded, and created
millions of refugees. This was the war that introduced us to the term
"ethnic cleansing."
The dominant Balkan power
at the time, Serbia wanted to keep Yugoslavia together, and failing
that, to carve out ethnically pure areas in the breakaway states to
create a Greater Serbia.
It was a horrible fantasy
that sought to destroy an ethnically mixed, intermarried community that
had lived peacefully and progressively together in Bosnia.
This war was defining for the region, for the world and for those of us who covered it.
We witnessed the heroic
resistance of a population under siege and shelling and sniping for
nearly four years. We learned the pain of watching men, women and
children brutally slaughtered. These were the non-combatants, casually
targeted in the crosshairs of the sniper's rifle, blown apart by mortar
shells when they went to collect water, bread, fuel or even heading to
school.
Sarajevo's 'Romeo and Juliet'
We learned the bitter
cynicism of the international community that refused for some time to
intervene, the United States and its allies finding every which way, and
every tortured rhetorical device -- including refusing to use the word
genocide -- to avoid getting off the sidelines.
I will never forget going
to the funerals, one for a little girl called Almedina. Sarajevo had
run short of everything even the letter "A" so Almedina's grave marker
could not be spelled correctly.
I will never forget the
mothers and fathers who would try to brave the siege around Sarajevo
airport, then try to make a dash to the other side where in one village
they could buy or scrounge some fresh fruit or vegetables, anything to
complement the meager rations and dried food the humanitarian airlift
would bring.
The night I was out there, a father managed to find a single apple for his child. For that he had risked his life.
On Friday more than 11,000 empty chairs will be arranged in silent poignant and powerful memory of Sarajevo's war dead.
Along with the citizens
of Sarajevo and other besieged Bosnian towns and villages, many of our
colleagues were killed and wounded.
And who will ever forget
the death camps, the skeletal prisoners who evoked the terrible crimes
of World War II? But this was at the end of the 20th century. This was
the satellite age. We were there and we reported the story day in and
day out, week after week, month...year after year.
This was the era of
"never again" and it was happening again -- ethnic cleansing and
genocide here in our own backyard, and on our watch. We fought back with
all the power of our media.
For me, Bosnia was where
I learned about the truth. Horrified when the do-nothing crowd
suggested I was taking sides, or losing my objectivity, I was forced to
confront this charge, and examine our Golden Rule.
Here in Bosnia I
determined that in the face of unspeakable crimes and the most serious
violations of international humanitarian order, there is no moral
equivalence, no blurring the line between victim and aggressor.
Objectivity means giving
all sides a fair hearing. It does not mean drawing a false moral
equivalence. In this case there is no one-hand-or-the other. And anyone
who seeks to hide under that calumny is not just a liar, but an
accessory, in this case to genocide.
I refused. It is the lesson of my lifetime.
As we all know, tens of
thousands of deaths later including at Srebrenica in the summer of 1995,
the worst massacre in Europe since World War Two, the U.S. finally
intervened with NATO allies, ended the war and launched the peace that
holds to this day.
No country, no crisis,
is the same. Of course Syria is not Bosnia, nor is it Libya, but in
Syria today a heavily armed military is besieging and slaughtering
ordinary civilians and outgunned rebels too as the state tries to crush
an uprising.
Just like in Bosnia, the
Syrian rebels/opposition have been denied the right to self defense,
for fear of "accelerating the conflict on the ground and making it
worse."
Just like in Bosnia when
the U.S. and its allies said they could not intervene "because it's a
civil war and all sides are equally guilty," (although that was not the
case as there was a clear aggressor) in Syria today they say they "don't
know who to help, who to arm, the opposition is fragmented."
The lesson of Bosnia is
that our democratic and free world which seeks to uphold the highest
values bestowed on humankind, could no longer watch as ordinary
civilians were butchered.
It's a lesson that took too long to implement, and the peace is not perfect, but at least the killing stopped.
Twenty years ago this month, Suada Dilberović and Olga Sučić were killed by Serb snipers at a peace rally, and mortar shells started falling on Sarajevo, marking the beginning of the Bosnian War. The conflict erupted in the wake of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1991, pitting the nascent countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia against each other along complicated ethnic and religious lines and leaving an estimated 100,000 people dead. In the three years between when the war officially broke out and when it ended in December 1995, some 200,000 people died, up to 50,000 women were raped, and 2.2 million people were displaced from their homes. It was the worst mass killings, and genocide, Europe had seen since World War II. Peter Turnley, a contract photographer for Newsweek at the time, captured the people and countries ravaged in the war.
“I have covered war and conflict worldwide over the course of the past 30 years,” Turnley says.
“While all conflicts are tragic, the war in Bosnia seemed to me to be one of the darkest and most profoundly sad conficts I have witnessed—a war among people that have been neighbors for centuries, who have so much in common with each other, yet have had such difficulty forgiving if not forgetting reailites and events of the past in order to live peacefully in the present. I continue to hope for bright, loving, and forgiving light to illuminate the life of this region for the future.”
Twenty years ago this month, Suada Dilberović and Olga Sučić were killed by Serb snipers at a peace rally, and mortar shells started falling on Sarajevo, marking the beginning of the Bosnian War. The conflict erupted in the wake of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1991, pitting the nascent countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Croatia against each other along complicated ethnic and religious lines and leaving an estimated 100,000 people dead. In the three years between when the war officially broke out and when it ended in December 1995, some 200,000 people died, up to 50,000 women were raped, and 2.2 million people were displaced from their homes. It was the worst mass killings, and genocide, Europe had seen since World War II. Peter Turnley, a contract photographer for Newsweek at the time, captured the people and countries ravaged in the war.
“I have covered war and conflict worldwide over the course of the past 30 years,” Turnley says.
“While all conflicts are tragic, the war in Bosnia seemed to me to be one of the darkest and most profoundly sad conficts I have witnessed—a war among people that have been neighbors for centuries, who have so much in common with each other, yet have had such difficulty forgiving if not forgetting reailites and events of the past in order to live peacefully in the present. I continue to hope for bright, loving, and forgiving light to illuminate the life of this region for the future.”
